Catalase and peroxide lab

1. Catalase and peroxide lab

2. What would happen to your cells if they made a poisonous chemical? • You might think that they would die. In fact, your cells are always making poisonous chemicals. • They do not die because your cells use enzymes to break down these poisonous chemicals into harmless substances. • Enzymes are proteins that speed up the rate of reactions that would otherwise happen more slowly. The enzyme is not altered by the reaction. You have hundreds of different enzymes in each of your cells.

3. Each of these enzymes is responsible for one particular reaction that occurs in the cell. In this lab, you will study an enzyme that is found in the cells of many living tissues. • The name of the enzyme is catalase (KAT-uh-LAYSS); it speeds up a reaction which breaks down hydrogen peroxide, a toxic chemical, into 2 harmless substances--water and oxygen. The reaction is: 2 H2O2 ----> 2 H2O + O2

4. 2 H2O2 ----> 2 H2O + O2 • This reaction is important to cells because hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is produced as a byproduct of many normal cellular reactions. • If the cells did not break down the hydrogen peroxide, they would be poisoned and die. • In this lab, you will study the catalase found in liver cells. You will be using beef liver. • It might seem strange to use dead cells to study the function of enzymes. This is possible because when a cell dies, the enzymes remain intact and active for several weeks, as long as the tissue is kept refrigerated.

5. Catalase 2 H2O2 ----> 2 H2O + O2